Thieves' World: Turning Points

Selina Rosen. Ritual Evolution

Kadasah was doing what she normally did towards the end of the early watch on an Ilsday night. She was holding up her end of the bar at the Vulgar Unicorn, her hand wrapped around her fourth glass of Talulas Thunder Ale, and trying desperately to ignore Kay-tin who was as usual bugging the living shite out of her.

"Kadasah," he started in a sultry, silky voice. Kaytin was tall for a S'danzo man but still several inches shorter than Kadasah, and she had to look down at him when he talked to her. When she bothered to pretend to be listening to him at all that is. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he was about to feed her a line. "Your eyes are as dark as the blackest night, your lips like the reddest cherries, your hair like golden, liquid moonlight…"

Kadasah interrupted him with an uncharitable laugh. "You're so full of crap your back teeth are brown. And my eyes are blue. Gods! If you're going to sling such total horse crap about, at least have the good taste to get my coloring right. And just what the hell is 'liquid moonlight' supposed to mean?"

"Horse shite! My hair is braided like it always is." Kadasah laughed, genuinely amused. When he wasn't driving her completely crazy with his unbridled lust, she occasionally found his attempts to bed her entertaining. Besides, in a strange way, except for Vagrant, who was a red stallion and therefore an even worse conversationalist than Kaytin, he was really her only friend.

"Maybe so, but sincere horse shite at the very worst," Kaytin said with a smile. And then he started the touching.

Kadasah was a little surprised. By her reckoning they hadn't gotten that far into the evening's festivities. Normally he would have waited for her to drink at least three more ales before he felt safe enough to start manhandling her. He had wrapped his arms around her waist and was nuzzling at her neck. She was about to smack him hard enough to send him careening across the room when she realized that this wasn't his usual horny, loverboy move, but his, "I'm showing that I'm attached to the big blond mercenary with all the weapons so don't even think about kicking my ass move." She also realized that a strange silence had fallen across the bar. Apparently Kaytin had heard it before she had, which meant that he was expecting trouble. She wondered what the philandering little thug had done this time.

Kadasah turned slowly to see who had walked in and made a face of disgust in spite of her best efforts.

"All right, get off me before I knock you across the bar. Frogs! It isn't some angry husband, just that horrid, slimy, dead-looking guy. No doubt he's coming after his equally horrid toady." She shoved Kaytin roughly back, and he managed to catch and straighten himself without looking clumsy in a way that only Kaytin could do. No doubt because he'd had so much practice.

He smiled at her appealingly. "My own sweet love. What is this talk of a jealous husband? Kaytin has nothing to fear from any irate man who has an unfaithful wife, for I only have eyes for you, and I am saving myself only for the day when you will make me the happiest man on earth by agreeing to be mi—"

"I don't think your eyes are the problem. However, perhaps you're telling the truth. After all, I find it hard to believe that any woman could be stupid enough to believe the utter crap that springs forth from your mouth," she said, cutting a look at him from the corner of her eyes. He started to speak again, and she held up her hand. "Oh, enough already. Just shut up." She wasn't in the mood for any more of his flowery tributes, or his lies.

Kaytin had a tendency to lie when it would have been easier to tell the truth.

She watched the horrible abortion that had entered the bar warily as it walked over to the twisted hunk of flesh that sat at a corner table drooling into a mug of ale and touching any woman who came into his reach. He didn't seem to be bothered at all by the number of times he got slapped. In fact, Kadasah got the impression that he rather liked being slapped.

Kaytin followed her eyes and shuddered, obviously as disgusted by the creep as she was. "I wonder what it wants here?"

Kadasah shrugged. "Who knows what goes through the mind of something like that—or if it even has a mind. What motivates it? His ugly little friend is bad enough. One night I'm here slinging a few ales down, telling a story about one of my jobs, and that twisted little bugger comes right up, pulls his pants down and shows me his privates. I thought at first that the creepy little toad had a third leg, but no, and he's got a dragon tattooed on it. Damndest thing you ever saw."

"Like I need anyone to kick anyone's butt for me. I handled it," she said with only the hint of a brag in her voice.

"I bet you did," Kaytin chuckled. "So, what did you do?"

"What do you think I did? I laughed, said that had to hurt, and then when I saw he wasn't going away I kicked his dragon."

"Ouch!" Kaytin laughed.

The thing with no eyes turned its face toward her. Sightless or not, Kadasah knew—the way prey knows it's being hunted—that it could see her. Suddenly Kadasah was in no mood to finish out her usual routine, so she downed her drink and started to sneak out of the bar without paying—which was part of her ritual.

The bartender, Pegrin the Ugly, who'd earned his name the hard way, laughed, obviously more amused than he was angry. "You Irrune rogue! Get back in here and pay your tab."

Kadasah mumbled as she went back to the bar and grudgingly paid for not only her tab but Kaytin's as well.

"You're leaving early."

"You shouldn't oughta serve things like that," Kadasah said in a whisper nodding over her shoulder. "You know it's up to no good."

Pegrin laughed. "If I kicked everyone out of the Vulgar Unicorn that was up to no good, I wouldn't have a single customer… Why, some people tell me I shouldn't serve the Irrune," he leaned over the bar to whisper confidentially, "because they steal."

Kadasah smiled innocently. "Have I ever stolen from you?"

"More than probably," he said with a smile.

Kadasah feigned injury, then with one backwards glance at the creature that looked like death warmed up and his freaky-looking lackey, she left.

Kaytin followed Kadasah out. "He usually just comes in, gets his twisted idiot boy and leaves," Kaytin said, curiosity obvious in his voice. "I wonder what he was up to tonight?"

Kadasah shrugged. "Something horrible you can bet. He's obviously waiting for someone. I'd like to kill that horrid thing." A momentary look of confusion crossed her face. "But I'm not really sure whether it's still alive or not, and if it's dead… well how would you go about killing something that's already dead?"

"Besides… no sense in killing someone unless you're getting paid. Isn't that what you always say, my love?" Kaytin asked with a smile.

"For that thing, I'd make an exception. Besides, I'm sure I could find someone who'd pay me to do it." Kadasah was perturbed. Her usual ritual had been interrupted by that hunk of decaying flesh pretending to be a man, therefore it was now time to move on to her alternate routine. "So, Kaytin… I was thinking that since I didn't get to drink myself into a coma like I usually do on Ilsday night, that I might as well get some work done." Now she looked at him and turned on the charm, making it hard to believe that she was the same woman who had spurned him so harshly just a few minutes ago in the bar. "You want to help me? I'll let you in for a cut…"

"Kaytin! Why, I'm cut to the very quick! When have I ever put your life in danger?" She hoped he didn't notice that she wasn't saying anything about stiffing him. There were deceptions and there were outright lies, and she froggin' well knew the difference.

He laughed and flung his hands around in front of him. "Too many times to count. You think I don't know what you're doing, but Kaytin isn't stupid. You are using me for bait. We go to the darkest, most horrid part of the ruined temple of Savankala or the Street of Red Lanterns, and you say 'Kaytin stand here,' or 'Kaytin stand there, and I'll tell you what to do next.' And I wait and I

wait, but you never tell me anything else, and then when some Dy-areelan spook is about to kill me you show up and kill them. You always cut off a scar or a tattoo—I have no idea why, and then it's always… 'Kaytin be a good fellow and cart off this body and bury it and I'll go get my reward and meet you back at the Vulgar Unicorn and we'll split the money.' So I go bury the body and go back to the Vulgar Unicorn where I wait and wait, but you don't come back to the bar for days and when you do, there is no money!"

"Hey, I pay your bar tab…"

"When you don't manage to sneak out without paying at all," Kaytin reminded.

"Come on, Kaytin, quit being such a big baby. It isn't that dangerous. Who's the best bastard sword fighter in all of Sanctuary, maybe even the world?"

"Why you are, my love, but…"

"And who but me has killed three men with one swing of an axe?"

"No one but you, my love, but…"

"With me to protect you, you are as safe in the darkest, dankest part of Savankala as you were in your mother's womb, and I swear that if you help me this time, I'll deal with you fairly. Maybe this will even be the night that I find your advances irresistible."

"In which case…" He walked up close to her and took her hand. "Why waste any part of the night on death and killing? Let us spend the whole night making mad and passionate love to one another, and wake up in each other's arms to find our passion renewed."

"Kaytin—how many times do I have to tell you? I can really only get seriously aroused after I've killed someone," Kadasah said with an irritated sigh. "I suppose if you'd rather I go off into the night by myself, alone, into the very heart of the Dyareelan lair… To do not only my job, but to bring about the death of yet another worshiper of the Lady of Blood, to spare countless poor souls from a lingering, painful death…"

To Kadasah there was never any doubt that Kaytin was at least part S'danzo, but she doubted seriously that he was the full-blooded S'danzo man that he claimed to be when he got very drunk and/or was trying to impress her. For one thing it seemed to go against everything she had ever been told about the S'danzo that he would be bragging about his heritage much less about his mother's Sight— which was remarkably something he apparently thought made him more attractive.

The S'danzo were supposed to be a secretive people, and Kaytin was about as subtle as a fart in a temple.

He kept complaining and going on about his mother's visions, and how he wasn't going to be lured into helping her even as she climbed onto Vagrant's back and he climbed onto the back of his mule and started following her down the road.

For the most part she didn't bother to listen; he was going to come; he always did. He bellyached and complained and moaned, and then did whatever she wanted him to do. She was sure this was due, in no small part, to the talisman of charisma she wore around her neck. She had stolen the charm from a wizard she'd once done a job for back before she started working for one of the "rich silk-sacked, so-called nobles living on the Processional," who now kept her in steady employment.

The talisman gave her a certain power over men, making her almost irresistible to them. When you lived by the blade you were always looking for anything that gave you any edge whatsoever. It was arguably easier for a man to kill an ugly woman than it was for him to kill a beautiful one, so…

Of course she hardly ever needed the charisma talisman since she'd started working for her patron, because the people she killed now cared very little about physical beauty. She continued to wear it because it made it very easy to manipulate most normal people— men in particular.

As she rode along ignoring Kaytin's moaning, she found herself once again trying to figure out just exactly who her employer was. She'd never actually seen the face of the man she worked for. He had approached her in shadows that first time, wearing a hood that covered his face, and she had never had any direct contact with him since. She left the pieces of skin with the tattoos or scars under a log in front of one god or another's ruined temple along the Avenue of Temples—as proof of her kill. When she came back the next day there was money. So she had no idea who her benefactor actually was.

She had laid in hiding once to see who would show up, but the person who came was obviously just a stable boy running an errand. She supposed she could have followed him. She knew it wouldn't be too hard for her to find out who her employer was, but she had long ago decided not to pursue it. This was a good job, and she didn't want to risk losing it.

Besides, she thought she probably knew, since at their first meeting he had told her his story. He was one of the few who had opposed the plan to invite the Irrune into town because he believed to the bitter end that he could negotiate with the Dyareelans. Then when Molin Torchholder led the Irrune into sight of the city walls, and the Dyreelans had only a little time to settle outstanding scores, they wreaked as much havoc as they could. They suspected, correctly, that the rich aristocrats and richer merchants had betrayed them, and sought vengeance against those they could lay hands on. Unfortunately, her benefactor didn't feel threatened because he'd ar-gued against bringing in the Irrune, so he and all that was his were easy to "lay hands on." The day before the city fell to Arizak, the Dyareelans killed his wife and children and burned his house to the ground. Then to add insult to injury they proceeded to torture him, trying to get him to confess to his "betrayal," and give up other names. Ironically, it was only the arrival of Kadasah's people, the very Irrunes he had fought to keep out, that had saved his life.

What else did she really need to know? Of course it didn't stop her from wondering.

Soon they had reached their destination. She decided on this night to use Kaytin as a lookout instead of bait, just to make him feel better. With him watching to make sure she was unseen, she dropped a bunch of broken glass onto the ground hoping that in the dim light it would look like gems. She then made a simple snare around the "gems" using a measuring rope she had stolen from a carpenter's job site just the day before. Then she moved into the shadows with Kaytin to wait, and wait, and wait.

Some weeks that's all she did. Wait all night and go home empty-handed. Sometimes she'd go months between kills. They didn't always come up in the same place, and they were careful. In fact, the more of them she killed, the more cautious they became, so sometimes she'd give up hunting them until they got cocky again, or she ran out of money—whichever came first.

"They aren't coming," Kaytin whispered, putting his mouth right against her ear. "Let's leave this awful place and go back to your house for the night. I will take you places you have never been before."

She shoved him away… "Yeah, like to a healer to get a cure for some disease you'd no doubt give me. Still you're right, nothing's going to come this way tonight." She got up and started picking up the pieces of glass. She was about to gather up the measuring rope when she heard something. She grabbed her axe off her waist, twisted towards the noise just in time, threw it and dropped the nearest one.

"Vagrant! Go!" she called, and heard him running away as she drew her sword from her back. There were dozens of them, and they were obviously cultists, because no one else had any reason to come after her. Well, at least not in this section of town. But… this just couldn't be! The cult was supposed to be all but extinct. She killed a couple of them, then something grabbed her feet and she was falling. Too late she realized she had stepped into her own trap. The last thing she remembered was a foul smelling rag being pressed against her nose and mouth.

When she woke up the air was dank and filled with the smell of death and mold. She knew immediately where they had taken her— the tunnels under the Street of Red Lanterns. She was tied up and alive—which wasn't necessarily a good thing when one had been captured by a cult that delighted in nothing quite so much as torturing a person to death. As she became more aware of herself and her surroundings she realized that she was tied to someone, and she soon realized that a familiar voice was screeching at her.

"—safe as in your mother's womb, she says! I'm the greatest fighter of all times, she says! Killed three men with one blow from my axe, she says! Now we are going to die the death of a thousand cuts or be burned alive to death—" "Yeah, that's what they usually do." Kadasah sighed. They had been tied up with their backs together. The bonds were so tight that she couldn't even wiggle her little ringer without pain.

"Lust," Kadasah corrected.

"My love blinded me. Now I am going to die. We're both going to die without ever consummating our love."

It was more than Kadasah could take at the moment. They had been captured and bound by the Dyareelan. She had never in her life been quite so sure of her own very immediate and horrible demise, and Kaytin was still whining because she hadn't slept with him.

"All right, dunderhead. Since you are more than probably right, and we are about to be killed, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You don't love me. Hell, if you saw the real me you probably wouldn't even find me attractive. I'm wearing a talisman I stole from a wizard that makes me look beautiful, a froggin' charm."

"So that you can get men to do whatever you like!" he hissed accusingly.

"Well, what other reason would I have?"

"Always with you people it is with the stealing…"

"While your people are oh so virtuous."

"Quiet," Kaytin said quickly, and Kadasah remembered where they were and that the only people the Dyareelans hated worse than the Irrune were the S'danzo. Then he whispered turning his head. "Don't tell me that it is only some spell. I know what is in my heart, and I admit to you before we both die that I love you and only you." Then his voice changed, and he screamed. "You treacherous, lying, deceitful, harpy who is getting me tortured to death!"

"Me!" Kadasah spat back. "You were supposed to be keeping watch. You were supposed to tell me if you saw anything… You know, anything—like a couple of dozen worshipers of the Destroyer! "

"Shush! Don't say her name, you'll call her here."

"Horse shite," Kadasah said, shaking her head wildly since it was one of the only parts of her body she could actually move. "Gods, shmods! There are no gods… I knew it! I knew you were lying even about your damn heritage! Everyone knows the S'danzo believe in gods about as much as I do."

"I'm not listening, I'm not listening! I am S'danzo but… I… I can have gods if I want to. It couldn't hurt. I'm going to pray to some gods, and I'm going to ask them to forgive you for your blasphemy."

"You'll be wasting your breath, Kaytin. There are no gods; your people know that. It's all just froggin' crap the priests tell people to get them to give them their money. Did you ever see a god?"

For answer he started praying in his native tongue in a nearly inaudible whisper. He knew she, like his own mother, believed what she said; he'd heard her say it before. But he had learned differently from his father, and he wasn't going to listen to Kadasah right now. Not when they obviously needed some god to come and save them, and she was going out of her way to enrage them all. Perhaps she did have some magical talisman. He could certainly find no good reason to love this horrid woman at this moment. "I tried to talk to my god once. Irrunega… He didn't talk back. Nothing in my life changed, either, so he obviously didn't listen. I tried talking to a dead relative—even an enemy. Finally I searched for my spirit guide. You know what happened? A big nothing. So go ahead pray your stupid head off, because it won't do you one damn bit of good."

"Well, we could—" She didn't really have any better ideas at the moment, so she looked around as much as she could. They were in a small, dank, wide space in the tunnel, with no doors on either side that she could make out. "All right—our legs aren't tied. If we work our legs up, maybe we could stand and try to get away."

Their first attempt only managed to land all of Kadasah's weight on Kaytin. He let out a groan and started praying again.

"No, no, now come on, we can do this. I'm taller than you, and we're tied at our backs, so we just have to remember that. I'll bend at the knees this time," she said.

The second time they succeeded in getting on their feet.

"Now what?" Kaytin asked.

It was a good question. It was black as pitch down either passage, and with their hands tied there was really no way to grab hold of the small candle that was lighting the tunnel where they'd been stowed. Obviously the light wasn't for them, it was there to keep any of their captors from stumbling over the pair in the darkness of the tunnel.

Suddenly—and amazingly, considering she'd been brain dead only a moment before—Kadasah had an idea. She pulled Kaytin over to the small table that held the candle. "We can burn the rope off!" she said forcing their hands over the flame.

"Ouch!" Kaytin screeched. "That's not the rope; it's my hand!"

"Sorry."

After a few more failed attempts the rope finally caught. A few scorched fingers and some ruined clothing later, they were free.

Kaytin grabbed the candle in its holder, and Kadasah smashed the small table, giving one leg to Kaytin and keeping another for herself. With the makeshift weapon in her hand she didn't feel quite as naked.

"Which way?" Kaytin asked.

"I don't know! How would I? It's not like I've been here before." She peered down both halls looking for any sign of light and found none. "But we've got to start moving. After all, they're going to come after us sooner or later and we can't stay here. In fact, I'm wondering why they haven't come after us already. You take a guess," she said indicating the two different passages.

"No, no. You only tell me to guess so that you can blame me when we wind up hopelessly lost. So you guess, and then I can blame you. Which seems fair since this is all your fault anyway."

"How do you figure?"

"Because all I wanted to do was make love. A painless, enjoyable pleasure, but no—you just had to go kill something."

They started walking. And walking. The longer they went without running into anyone the more worried she became. This wasn't right. Their captors should have come to get them and torture them to death way before this. They should have at the very least noticed they were missing by now, and how hard was it to find people in a tunnel? You could run down one way or the other, but that was about it. So far they hadn't come to anything jutting off from the main tunnel, although she was fairly sure such exits and entrances existed.

She was an excellent swordswoman—without a sword. She was experienced with an axe—though the "three men with one blow" was mostly a lie—but she had no axe, either. She was most probably the best horsewoman in all of Sanctuary, if not the world. But she was in a tunnel, and her horse was the gods only knew where above her.

She had a candle and a charisma talisman and a couple of table legs, and she was lost underground with possibly hundreds of Bloody Hand Dyareelans and of course Kay tin, who just kept praying to some gods even though he insisted he was S'danzo, and she constantly pointed out how useless it was.

She hadn't felt this helpless since her parents split up. Her father had chosen to take her with him while her mother had stayed behind with her younger siblings—she'd had no choice and no control then, either.

Her father had been a minor member of Nadalya's entourage, and she had grown up in the palace as basically his personal slave and housekeeper. But being in the palace gave her the chance to watch as Nadalya's guards trained, and they had taught her much. She became a skilled fighter because her father took her to live among fighters, and she became untrusting and uncaring because he took her away from the people she loved and who loved her.

Her father had disowned her when at the age of sixteen she left his service to become a mercenary. However, everyone knew whose daughter she was and she knew her father was occasionally asked to pay restitution for damage she'd done either while drunk, in a fight or both. It didn't bother her, if he chose to pay that was his problem not hers.

The mercenary life was a good one for someone like her, someone who had no ties and no commitments except to herself. Kadasah certainly never considered joining any war band. She might very well be good at giving orders—she certainly believed she was—but she sure as hell wasn't any good at all at taking them.

That one event that happened when she was only nine, had shaped her whole life—changed it totally from its original course. And here she was again with no control, basically helpless. Except that now she had a lifetime of experience behind her, and she wasn't a little kid that people could kick around. She made her own decisions now, and her destiny was in her own hands. All she had to do was use her head. This time her weapons skill wasn't going to be enough, though. She couldn't fight herself out of this one; she was going to have to think and think quickly.

Damn that creepy almost dead guy! He ruined my routine! Nothing is right! It's all his fault. I swear, if I get out of this one, I'm going to get that creep!

Suddenly she heard voices, and she threw herself and Kaytin against the wall and blew out the candle.

"What the…" Kaytin started in a whisper, but quieted down when he also heard the sound of voices getting closer. He seemed to be trying to actually crawl into the tunnel wall behind them and wasn't doing a half-bad job. Kaytin was of course a natural hider, just as she was a natural fighter.

From the tone of their voices it was obvious that they were agi-tated and unhappy. She thought at first it must be because they had discovered that she and Kaytin were missing, but gradually it became clear that this wasn't the case.

Kadasah spoke both Wrigglie as well as Irrune, but these two seemed to be speaking in a tongue which was as foreign to her as the prayers Kaytin had been mumbling earlier. It was only as they got closer that she realized that they were speaking Wrigglie, just a slower more deliberate version than she was used to. Some people told her she talked too fast, and sometimes when she did this, she knew she stuck Irrune words in, making it impossible for people to understand her. As she listened to these two obviously agitated people, she wondered what they must sound like when they weren't excited.

"—cause she is an Irrune woman, a mercenary from her attire. Kopal swears he has seen her in the palace, that he recognizes her from Arizak's court. He thinks that Arizak may realize that we have infiltrated his court. That he may have sent her here to spy on us—to find out who our spies are," the woman was saying.

"Nonsense, how could they know? How would they? We have captured ourselves a couple of sacrifices. Nothing less and nothing more. I will talk to Kopal and calm him down. He worries too much…"

"But he wishes to question her before we sacrifice her."

"That shouldn't be too hard. We can use her little friend to get the information from her."

As she listened to them she was a little amused, and a whole lot of ashamed. She had been sure that they had been carefully hunting her, having figured out that she was the one killing them. Instead she and Kaytin had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been picked up as sacrifices. It was more than a little embarrassing considering her profession, and she hoped that Kaytin couldn't understand what they were saying, or at least wouldn't come to the same conclusion that she just had.

They came into view then. They were covered in scars and tattoos, and all else was forgotten as the mercenary in Kadasah saw money— enough to buy new weapons.

She lay very still, barely breathing, and noticed that Kaytin did the same. When the pair were almost abreast of them she jumped out and plowed her table leg into the man's nose hard enough to bury it in his brain. Then she caught the stunned woman on the backswing, effectively and permanently silencing her as well. She grabbed their candle before it could go out and handed it to Kaytin. He took the candle and held it for her so that she could see to search their bodies, taking a long dirk from a sheath on the man's side, and collecting a trophy from each of the bodies. She then started walking in the direction the two cultists had been coming from, now carrying both the table leg and the dead man's knife. Part of her really wanted to search around and see if she couldn't find her own weapons, but she knew the chances of finding them were slim and staying in the tunnels one more second than they had to was just flat insane.

"But…" Kaytin scratched his head, as he followed her. "We were going that way." He pointed behind them.

"Yes, and so were they. Since they were going to meet with more of their kind."

"Back this way. But why didn't they notice we were gone?"

It was a good question, and she thought about it for a minute. "There has to be another tunnel that we missed, and that one will get us out of this hole. Hopefully to the surface."

It took them about an hour to find Kaytin's mule, and another to catch him. They were about to mount up when Kaytin turned to look at Kadasah. "So, let's see this enchanted talisman you use to confound men."

Kadasah went to pull the cord up out of the front of her shirt and found it missing.

"Damn, it's gone! Those bastards must have taken it as well."

"And yet you look no different to me, and I feel the same way about you." He kissed her cheek, got on his mule, and rode away.

"Frogs!" Kadasah cursed. "That wizard cheated me."

It wound up being easier for her to gain an audience with Arizak than it was to get him to believe the truth of what she'd heard. It didn't help that her father stood there the whole time insisting that she was an unworthy daughter who had gone away from the old ways, and was only there to tarnish his good name. In the end she consoled herself with the idea that they had been told now, and that maybe it would plant a seed of doubt and get them to open their eyes to the possibility at the very least.

She employed the skill of a whip of a man named Heliz to write a letter to accompany the trophies she left in their usual place, and against her normal habit she actually paid him his fee without question. In the letter she told her employer very briefly about the events of the night before. She also told him how many of the Dyareelans there actually were, and that many were deliberately remaining unmarked obviously so that they could infiltrate the population. She could only hope that he would listen better than Arizak. When she returned later to retrieve her reward there was four times as much money as normal, so she assumed that he believed her.

She used the money to buy new and better weapons, and spent a few days in quiet reflection just hanging out in the outbuilding of an abandoned red-brick estate in the hills beyond the walls. This also allowed Vagrant to have a few well-earned days of uninterrupted grazing time.

On Ilsday she rode to the Vulgar Unicorn and was halfway through her fourth beer and her third embellished telling of the events of a week ago when Kaytin finally showed up.

"I… I thought maybe you weren't coming," she said.

"I wasn't going to," he shrugged. "But I couldn't stay away."

"Here," she reached in her pocket and pulled out several coins. He held out his hand with trepidation, and she dropped the coins into his hand, each one falling a little more reluctantly than the one before it.

"You… Kadasah! You're actually paying me." He added with a laugh, "Are you sure you're all right?" "Actually," she said with a smile, "I'm a little miffed. I wouldn't have wasted my time stealing that talisman if I had known it was worthless. And by the way it stank whenever it got wet."

"I was just trying to get an edge."

"My love… Your eyes are like the bluest ocean, your lips are gentle like the curve of a bow…"

"Frogs, Kaytin!" Kadasah said in disgust. "You aren't going to start all that crap again are you? I almost got you killed! You have to stay mad at me longer than this."

"I cannot help it, Kadasah. Kaytin's love for you leaps within his chest at the vision of your loveliness, and…"

The dead-looking guy walked into the bar, and everyone got quiet. He turned to fix Kadasah with an eyes-sewed-shut stare, and her blood ran cold. She looked at Kaytin, did a quick rundown of everything that had happened the last time the creep had looked at her, and said, "All right, Kaytin, I give. Let's go make love."

She left without paying her tab, and Kaytin eagerly followed.